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Link: So, what’s up with this study?

Since when is a group of 20 men a statistically viable sample in regards to determining these links.

One guy concludes that more research needs to be done. I should say so. For instance, maybe research that involves women?

I say this because studies like these cloud the truth more than they help. Mostly because there is such a lack of real hard evidence that doctors will always fall back on the same old cure “well just eat less of this or that and exercise more.”

That makes it all seem so simple. But it’s not simple. And if there are a number of hidden factors that effect our actual hunger levels that have nothing to do with a lack of self-control, then the eat less/exercise more gig ends up feeling a lot like torture.

On a lighter note… I can’t re-find something I came across while (once again indulging in something that is pretty much always a mistake) looking at blogs by other bloggers. Because, of course, most fitness and health bloggers will indulge in passing along the SIX BAD EXCUSES FOR OVEREATING (formerly at this link, and maybe you will have better luck with when you click it than I have had).

I was going to blog about this “article” (try slide show with pithy cutlines) because of the way that it supposedly cues us into a “reality check”… As if everyone who “overeats” is just delusional and spends more time making excuses then actually take care of themselves in the appropriate way. REAL reality check, the only time I ever hear people say I’m making “excuses” for my weight is when I am telling others to stop stigmatizing fat people.

Boy I could go on, but it’s not there so why bother? The point I would have made is that the constant rhetoric of articles like this are, at the end of the day, counter productive and flat-out counter intuitive. Mostly because I really doubt that people actually “make” these excuses, or if they do, not with any real frequency. These excuses are, more often than not, the perceptions of others. My favorite, “PMS” is a great example. Do you ever flat-out blame your PMS for an episode of real bingeing? I never had. Has any woman? Where are the statistics to prove that women actually say “I have PMS so I’m going to eat a whole bag of Chips-ahoy!”

I am pretty sure that those who struggle with over eating KNOW the down sides to overeating and DON’T say these things simply because we’re past the whole “making excuses” thing. We know we can’t control it, we’re not going to palm off the responsibility for it onto something else like hormones.

Just like fat, there is varying degrees to overeating. What is harmful is the reduction of these degrees down to one, fat is fat, overeating is overeating, and thus any single person who has these “labels” attached to them are automatically at the highest degree, just because there is no recognition of a middle degree.

If we are really going to change this world to create healthier lifestyles for all, then we need to stop reducing issues like this to “every time you make an excuse for why you overeat, you are lying to yourself. So stop lying to yourself and us to justify your own bad behavior.”

That sort of attitude is just NOT HELPFUL in the long run and, because of the negative undercurrent in that sort of rhetoric, ends up making people feel bad for doing some stereotypical behavior that may never have actually engaged in.